One Last Stop, page 21
She wonders if she should be having some kind of mental journey about that. She doesn’t feel different. She doesn’t look any different, just round-faced and splotchy, like a hard-boiled egg with a sunburn.
“Virginity is a social construct,” Niko says mildly, and August glares at him. He does a vague sorry-for-reading-your-mind gesture. August is going to dropkick his cactus out the window.
“It’s true,” Myla says, head popping out of their bedroom, eyes wide behind her welding goggles, still wearing her satin bonnet from the night before. “The whole idea is based on cissexist and heteronormative and quite frankly colonial-ass bullshit from a time when getting a dick in you was the only definition of sex. If that’s true, me and Niko have never had sex at all.”
“And we both know that’s absolutely not the case,” Niko says.
“Yeah, our walls are thin and I have ears,” August says, heading toward her bedroom in search of something to tie her hair up. “What kind of safeword is ‘waffle cone,’ anyway?”
“Speaking of overhearing things,” Myla presses on, “did I hear Niko say you’re sleeping with Jane?”
“I—” August shoots a perturbed glance at Niko, who has the decency to look as sheepish as he ever does, which is mostly just a slightly less jovial jut of his hips. “You can’t really call it ‘sleeping.’ There’s not really a bed involved.”
“Fucking finally! Like, literally!”
“Lord.”
“Did you make sure she was clean? Can you catch an STI from a ghost?”
“She’s not a ghost,” August and Niko say in unison.
“Okay, still, let me be a mom for a second.”
“Look, yeah, she’s—it’s fine.” August would love for their creaky floorboards to finally open up and drop her out of this conversation. “It’s come up before. I have to keep track of everything she remembers, okay?”
“Oh, yeah, classic getting-to-know-you conversation,” Myla says from across the hall. “What kind of music do you like? Where are you from? Do you now or have you ever had crabs?”
“You just described our first date, verbatim,” Niko points out.
August, still searching for a ponytail holder, picks up her bag and upends it on the bed.
Her blue ponytail holder from last night falls out, and she tries not to think about tying her hair up while Jane’s teeth worried at her skin. With Niko on the other side of the wall, she might as well project a PowerPoint presentation of herself getting railed on the subway for the whole apartment.
She frowns down at the mess from her bag. A pack of batteries? Where did those come from?
“Oh,” she says, realizing. “Ohhhh, bitch.”
God, she can’t believe it took her so long to notice. This is why you aren’t supposed to kiss your case. She fumbles her phone off her desk so fast, she nearly flings it out the open window.
Weird question, she texts Jane, fingers trembling. Distantly, she hears Niko and Myla in the hallway discussing soil brands. Can you open the battery compartment on your radio and tell me what you see?
Nothing? There’s nothing in there. Why?
There are no batteries in your radio?
Nope.
Didn’t you ever wonder how it works?
I figured it was like my cassette player? It doesn’t have batteries either. I’m a sci-fi freak show, I just assumed that was part of it.
You’ve had a magical cassette player all this time and you never thought to investigate?????? Or mention it???????
I don’t know! I told you when I showed it to you that I didn’t know how it worked! I thought you knew!
I thought you meant you didn’t know how it worked because it was so old???
Wow, that’s calling ME old.
asldfjasf if I thought you could die I would strangle you
She slams back out of her room and into the hall, almost getting a faceful of Niko’s cactus.
“Careful! Cecil is sensitive!”
She ignores him, throwing the package down on the floor in front of the alarm clocks Myla has been blowtorching together all afternoon. “Batteries!”
“What?”
“Batteries,” August repeats. “When you sold me that radio, you told me to make sure I put batteries in it. So I bought those, but—but that was in the middle of the whole kissing-induced horniness fog, so I forgot to give them to her.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But it still works. Her radio, her cassette player—shit, her phone, I gave her a portable battery for it weeks ago but I’ve never seen her use it. None of her electronics need batteries to work. So that means—”
“—whatever is keeping her on the train has to do with electricity,” Myla finishes. She shoves her goggles up onto her forehead. “Whoa.”
“Yeah.”
“Wait. Wow. Yeah, that would make sense. It’s not the train, it’s the line. Maybe she’s bound to—”
“The current. The electrical current of the tracks.”
“So—so whatever event threw her out of time—it might have been electrical. A shock, maybe.” She sits back on her heels, sending LaCroix cans rattling across the floor. It’s impossible to tell if they’re for Myla’s project or hydration. “But something like that, the voltage of the line—I don’t understand how it wouldn’t just kill her.”
“And she’s definitely not dead,” Niko helpfully reminds them.
“I don’t know either,” August says. “There must be more to it. But this is something, right? This is big.”
“It could be,” Myla says.
It’s a conversation that goes on for days. August jots down thoughts on her arm in the middle of finals, takes notes during shifts in her guest check pad, meets Myla at Miss Ivy’s to talk it through for the hundredth time.
“You remember the first time I tried to meet her on my own?” Myla says. She’s unpacking a to-go bag full of vegan curry and patties, Niko’s lunch. He’s in the back with a client, and Miss Ivy is on the other side of the shop, watching them warily. “And I couldn’t find her? But when you brought Niko with you, she was there.”
“Yeah,” August says. She glances at Miss Ivy. It’s probably not the weirdest topic ever discussed here. She lowers her voice anyway. “But we’ve all gone down alone and seen her at some point.”
“But not until after you introduced us. You’re the most important point of contact. We can find her because she recognizes us through you.”
“What do you mean?”
“August, you said it yourself—if she doesn’t see you for a while, she starts to come unstuck. It’s not like she’s on every train all the time—she’s flickering to the one you’re on. You’re what’s keeping her here. You’ve watched Lost—you’re her constant.”
August drops down onto a rickety stool, rattling the shelf of crystals behind it. Her constant.
“But … why?” August asks. “How? Why me?”
“Think about it. What are feelings? How does your body communicate to your brain?”
“Electrical impulses?”
“And how do you feel when you look at Jane? When you talk to her? When you touch her?”
“I don’t know. Like my heart is gonna come out of my ass and suplex me into the mantle of the earth, I guess.”
“Exactly,” she says, jabbing a plastic fork in August’s direction. She’s started in on Niko’s curry. If he doesn’t finish communing with the beyond soon, he’s not going to have a lunch. “That’s chemistry. That’s attraction. That’s, like, boner city. And that comes with all these super powerful electrical impulses between your nerve endings, all throughout that big beautiful brain of yours. If we’re right and her existence is tethered to the electricity of the line, then every time you make her feel something, every time you touch her or kiss her, every interaction you have is generating more electrical impulses, which means you’re making her more … real.”
“When we—” August realizes out loud. “The other day, when we—you know—”
“August, we’re adults, just say you got your back blown out.”
Across the room, Miss Ivy unfurls a paper fan like she does when she’s having a hot flash.
“Can you please,” August begs. “Anyway, before, right when I said I wanted to—the train broke down. So, are you saying—?”
A dirty smile dawns on Myla’s face.
“Oh my God. She literally shorted out the train because she was horny,” she says, eyes sparkling with absolute awestruck admiration. “She’s an icon.”
“Myla.”
“She’s my hero.”
“God, so—so that’s … that’s why,” August says. “It’s a feedback loop between her and the line. That’s how she knows when the emergency lights are gonna come on and when they aren’t. That’s why the lights go crazy when she’s upset. It’s all interconnected.”
“And why your insane kissing-for-research plan worked,” Myla says. “The attraction between you two is literally a spark, and it’s the same spark that’s bringing her back into reality. She feels something, the line feels it, electrical impulses in her brain start firing, it pieces her back together. It’s you, August. You’re the reason she’s staying in one place. You’re what’s keeping her here.”
That’s … a lot, August thinks.
Jane texts her that night, Missed you today, and August thinks about her warm mouth and collarbones in the moonlight and wants, but the next day is an exam straight into a late shift. So she takes a different train, and Myla meets her at Billy’s and sits at the counter with a burger, picking up right where they left off.
“Okay, but why me?” August says.
“I thought we had gotten past your denial that she wants to eat chocolate fondue off your ass and then cosign a mortgage.”
“No, I mean, I can believe that she—she likes me,” August says in a tone that sounds like she cannot believe it at all. “But she’s been on that train so long. I’ve found Craigslist posts and personal ads—people have been falling in love with her for years. She really never had a crush on anyone before now? Why was meeting me the first time she locked into a moment in time?”
Myla swallows an enormous bite of beef. It’s not that Niko enforces a vegetarian household, it’s just that Myla enjoys meat more when Niko’s not there to look distantly sad about the environment.
“Maybe you’re meant to be. Love at first sight. It happened to me.”
“I don’t accept that as a hypothesis.”
“That’s because you’re a Virgo.”
“I thought you said virginity was a construct.”
“A Virgo, you fucking Virgo nightmare. All this, and you still don’t believe in things. Typical Virgo bullshit.” Myla puts her burger down. “But maybe there was, like, an extra spark when you met, that pulled the trigger. What do you remember about it?”
God, what does she remember? Besides the smile and kind eyes and general aura of punk rock guardian angel?
She tries to think past that—to the skinned knee, the way she had tugged the sleeves of her jacket over her hands to hide the scrapes, trying not to cry.
“I had spilled coffee all over my tits,” August says.
“Very sexy,” Myla notes, nodding. “I get what she sees in you.”
“And she gave me her scarf to cover it up.”
“Dream girl status.”
“I do remember there was, like, a static shock, when I reached for the scarf and our hands brushed, but I was wearing wool and the scarf was wool and I just never thought anything of it. Do you think that was it?”
Myla considers. “Maybe. Or maybe that was a side effect. Energy going nuts. Anything else?”
“I had just come from work, and she told me I smelled like pancakes.”
“Oh. Hm.” She uncrosses her legs, leaning forward across the counter. “She used to work here, right?”
“Right.”
“And this place does have a … very particular smell, right?”
“Right…” August says. “Oh. Oh! So you think it was a sense memory? Like she recognized Billy’s?”
“Smell is the strongest memory trigger. Could have done it. Maybe it was the first time she encountered something she really recognized on the train.”
“Seriously?” August lifts the collar of her T-shirt to her nose. “Wow, I’m never gonna bitch about smelling like pancakes again.”
“You know,” Myla says, “if we can figure out what happened, exactly how her energy got tied into the energy of the line, and we can re-create the event…”
August drops her shirt collar. “We could undo it? That’s how we get her out?”
“Yeah,” Myla says. “Yeah, I think it could work.”
“And—and she snaps back to the ’70s for good?”
Myla thinks. “Probably. But there’s a chance … I mean, there aren’t really any rules in this. So who knows? Maybe there’s a chance she could lock into right here, right now.”
August stares at her. “Like … permanently?”
“Yeah,” Myla says.
August allows herself five seconds to picture it: Jane’s jeans tangled up in August’s laundry, late nights and split bills, kisses on the sidewalk, oversweet coffee in bed.
She shakes the idea out, turning back to the register. “She probably won’t, though.”
That afternoon, August finally makes her way to the Q. She didn’t mean to go three days without seeing Jane after they had sex, honestly—she just got caught up in the case. It has absolutely nothing to do with how Jane kissed her for real inside a perfect moment in the middle of the night and August doesn’t know how to approach this inside a normal Thursday afternoon.
On her way to the platform, she sees the sign. Same warning, same deadline: September. The Q is closing in September. She could lose Jane forever in September. And even if she figures things out, she’ll probably lose Jane anyway—to the ’70s, her own time.
So, there’s that, and there’s the very fresh memory of gasping into oblivion on the Manhattan Bridge, and there’s the idea that whatever they are to each other is what makes Jane real, and there’s August, standing on a platform, trying to file each thing neatly away into different file drawers in her brain.
It’s crowded today, but Jane’s sitting, tucked at the end of a bench between the back wall of the car and someone’s towering Ikea haul.
“Hey, Coffee Girl,” Jane says when August manages to wedge her way between commuters. August tries to read her face, but her features assemble into her usual expression: gentle amusement, like she’s thinking of a half-remembered joke at nobody’s expense.
August wants to kiss her mouth again. August, inconveniently, wants to do a lot of things again.
“Where’ve you been?” Jane asks.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—I had this big breakthrough with your case, and finals, everything was nuts, but—anyway, I have a lot to catch you up on.”
“Okay,” Jane says placidly. “But can you come down here and tell me?”
“What—” August starts, before Jane grabs her and pulls her down. She thumps gently into Jane’s lap. “Oof. Hello.”
Jane grins back. “Hi.”
“Oh, it’s nicer down here,” August says.
“Yeah, I made reservations.”
There’s a certain threshold at which a packed subway car goes from too personal to completely impersonal, so many people that they blend together and nobody takes notice of anyone else. In Jane’s little pocket of bench, surrounded by backpacks and turned backs and boxed-up Björksnäs units, it almost feels private.
August settles in, bundling her jean jacket into her lap. Her skirt has fanned out behind her, draping over them both, and she’s acutely aware of the way Jane’s denim feels against her bare thighs, the rips that allow skin to touch skin.
“What?” Jane says, studying her face. August imagines the look on it: a combination of uptight and turned on, which pretty much sums her up.
“I need to tell you about the case,” August says.
“Uh-huh,” Jane says. “But what?”
“You know what.”
One of Jane’s hands travels up, spanning the top of August’s thigh. August looks at her, and something tugs in her chest, and she wonders if that’s it—the electricity. Desire and chemistry coiled up inside something bigger, something deeper and softer.
“Listen,” Jane says. “You can’t look at me like that and not tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking—” August starts, and the thing in her chest tugs harder, and she can’t. She can’t say that whatever is between them is the reason this is happening at all. If she says it, she’ll break it. “I’m thinking about you.”
Jane narrows her eyes. “What about me?”
“About … the other night.” Not a complete lie.
“Yeah,” Jane says. “I guess we haven’t talked about it.”
“Do we have to?”
“I guess not,” she replies, her thumb stroking a curved line up the inside of August’s leg. “But we should talk about what you want.”
And it’s … God. August can feel it: the way things have shifted, the intent that sparks off of Jane like flint, the way she rakes her eyes down from August’s mouth to her throat like she’s thinking about the mark she left there. August came down here to debrief, but she might as well be unbuttoning her shirt for how present her brain is.
Is this what it’s always like? To want someone and know they want you back? How in the world does anyone get anything done?
“I want to talk about the case.” August wants to scream. Spiritually, she is screaming.
Jane’s hand pauses. “Okay.”
“It’s—it’s super important. Really big stuff.”
“Sounds like it.”
“But.”
“Yeah,” Jane says. Their eyes meet. God, it’s hopeless.
“This whole thing we have going on is … it’s very bad for my productivity,” August says.
“What exactly do we have going on?” Jane asks her. “You still haven’t told me.”
“The thing where I wanted you for months, and then I had you, and now I want you all the time,” August says before she can stop herself. She feels her face go pink. “We’re on a deadline, and it’s distracting.”
